- Historical replacement of markets.
- The question of great significance.
- The benefits of e-business.
The world of business is different in its forms and kinds. During many centuries people did not know about something but a direct trade on markets, in offices and in the international discourse. Merchants tend to use every means supporting their life with products, services and conveniences on the whole. The Internet is marked as a source of new sphere of business management changing the boarders between producers, distributers, dealers and customers.
In the age of high technologies it is important not to lag behind the requirements and methods of managing some business. With the existence of the Internet people opened the world of new possibilities reflected through electronic commerce (e-commerce). This type of business changed the structure and view of international markets with “business-to-business trade” (Laudon and Traver, 2002). Places of markets providing the link between buyers and sellers vary in many product categories. It is valuable for its efficiency.
There must be a discussion about the sites on which e-commerce is embodied and represented. The site is a platform of potential customers’ requirements and desires. Here appears a strict critical question: What would prefer to place on it in order to additionally sell something more than only products and services of yours? This is a plus of e-business because of a wider range of possibilities provided. For example, many on-line magazines provide customers with weather forecast or currency exchange information. Albrecht Anders in his book “Strategies for E-Business” outlines some cases of such integration in the world of e-commerce:
The online travel agency ebookers.com, for instance, has links on its website that point to weather reports, currency exchange information, car rental services and travel insurance. Amazon.com went even beyond the Amazon.com vision statement mentioned above. It invited all types of retailers to sell their products on its online platform (including new and used books) which might be in direct competition with its own product offerings (Enders & Tawfik 256).
E-commerce works to meet the requirements in two directions: economics and trust. It is, of course, not a substitution for the accepted earlier retail design of selling products in a shop. It is important to use it in case of complex information and packages to be delivered as soon as possible. “The consensus opinion seems to be that electronic commerce will provoke dramatic movements toward greater international integration of economic activity” (Journal of International Business Studies, 2001).
The relationship between the popularity of the site determines the price of using its web area for commercials. This question is to have further realization in the fulfillment of the company which owns definite web resource or portal. The next step of e-business development, as I see, will be in its future integration into people’s life providing the opportunities which will help to do business notwithstanding the destination of supplier and customer. The first steps passed, the new challenge promotes plenty of new decisions. One should keep a strict eye on such a process.
Reference List
Laudon, Kenneth C. ‘E-commerce : business, technology, society’, Boston : Addison Wesley, 2002.
Kalakota, R, Robinson, M. ‘E-business : roadmap for success’ Reading, Mass.; Harlow : Addison-Wesley, 1999.
Farhoomand, AF ‘Managing (e)business transformation : a global perspective’ Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Farhoomand, AF ‘Global e-commerce : texts and cases’, Jurong : Prentice Hall, 2001.
Globerman, S, Roehl TW ‘Globalization and Electronic Commerce: Inferences from Retail Brokering’; Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 32, 2001.
Enders, A & Tawfik, J ‘STRATEGIES FOR E-BUSINESS: CONCEPTS AND CASES’; Pearson Education, 2008.